Totally Accurate Battle Simulator Review
I think one of the oldest arguments in human history is probably “could X beat Y?” You see it in sports discussions, military history, card and board games, movies of all stripes, and on basically any school playground, unless kids have radically changed since I was one. I’m sure psychologists have come up with a very smart term for the human desire to prove that their guy/team would definitely beat the other guy/team, but I’m not so clever. Instead, I sit back and enjoy these preposterous imaginary clashes. So I felt lucky when Totally Accurate Battle Simulator finally exited their Early Access period and released as a finished product, as much as any game does these days, last week.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is the latest in the “simulator” genre of games, featuring the standards of nonsensical physics, silly controls, and humorous atmosphere of Surgeon Simulator and Totally Reliable Delivery Service. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, or TABS, is a strategy game that pits players against a variety of armies composed of forces from a multitude of eras and genres. Players must use their cunning and creativity to deploy an army of their own from an equally disparate pool of combatants across dozens of battlefields and challenges, all in the hopes of having the last soldier standing.
If there’s one thing that’s unquestionably admirable about Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, it’s the sheer variety. Before unlocking or creating any additional units, players have access to 12 different factions, each with seven unique units. These 84 units can be mixed and matched in almost every scenario and campaign in TABS, enabling a huge amount of creativity and customization of strategies. For example, if a player wants a broad but cheap front line for their army, the Tribal faction, composed of prehistoric humans, are ideal for the task because of their lower than average cost. But if a player wants shock troops that are heartier to stay in the fight longer, the Viking faction can be brought in. There are also ranged combat aficionados in the Wild West and Pirate factions, as well as the magic-wielding combatants from the Spooky and Fantasy factions. More fun than these are the unlockable units of the Secret and Legacy factions. These factions have no consistent theme and are instead a sort of dumping ground for ideas the developers had but weren’t able to be put into the “base” factions due to the seven unit limit. But what these factions lack in aesthetic cohesion they make up for in fun. Players can deploy velociraptors, banshees, necromancers, and literal tanks. However, the player must first search the game’s many maps for items before using any of these units, which in itself is a fun activity because the levels are designed with such care and detail it feels like they began life as a hidden object puzzle game. I do want to encourage everyone to feel comfortable using a guide to find all of them, because many are hidden in very devious ways.
When players have had all the fun they wanted, or hit a scenario they can’t beat, there is a robust custom content creator that can be used to develop new units, factions, scenarios and even entire campaigns. I was impressed with the breadth of tools the developers of TABS gave players to make custom content, especially when it came to creating custom units. Players are able to modify every aspect of their custom unit, from attack range to targeting behavior to special abilities to even what clothes they wear. Best of all, the unit creator has a built-in unit cost calculator that factors in each weapon and ability players give their units and assigns it a fair point value but then also gives players the option to set whatever price they want, so long as it’s above 20 points for some reason. This gives players the option to make a balanced and more widely acceptable unit, or to be like me and stuff every cool ability into a 50 point game-breaking super soldier. Creating a custom faction and campaign isn’t very interesting, simply building a roster or setting fights in a particular order, but the battle creator is impressively robust as well. When making a battle of their own, players can set objectives, player’s starting funds and units, and change the battle lines, which affect where players can deploy their troops. Players can also upload their own creations for others to enjoy and download items in return, which I think will keep fans coming back for quite some time.
Unfortunately, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has a problem of split identities that makes sure I won’t be a returning player. Given the name and goofy aesthetic, it would seem like it was aiming for a lighthearted, goofy style of game play. Surprisingly, this is inaccurate a large percentage of the time. While some levels can be easily beaten by tossing out one Zues unit on your side and calling it a day, the majority of campaigns feature scenarios that require some very tactful planning and deployment of troops. This wouldn’t be a problem except that all of the units flop around like marionettes controlled by a drunken puppeteer, which results in quite a lot of losses that by all rights should have been wins. I have had archers stumble and get their hands, and bows, stuck behind their back, catapult operators push their catapults off cliffs, and melee fighters fail to close with an enemy because they got stuck on the corner of a building. It’s infuriating to see a skirmish slip through your fingers because your soldiers forgot how their own bodies work and it keeps this game from being the enjoyable tactical puzzle it’s apparently trying to be. Weirder still, the slapstick physics of the combatants means that even the most foolproof plan can fall apart at any moment because a unit decided to swing right to left instead of left to right. There were times when I couldn’t tell if my plan was actually a failure or if I was being let down by my noodle-boned subordinates that I ended up running the same strategy several times in the hopes of a better roll of the limb-control dice.
I like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, I really do, but it doesn’t seem to like itself or it would have made up its mind whether it wanted to be a comedy skirmish game or a tactical simulation game. There’s plenty to do and create with the custom content tools they give players, but there’s no way to make the theme and mechanics more coherent. If you can find TABS on sale for around $10, I say give it a shot, you’ll probably have fun, but for the full $20 you’re probably better off playing something else.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth buying, just not at the price they’re asking
